Yet another weekend and very little building. Well, Angel and I worked on some kits Friday night, but all I have done are the arms and head for the Full Armor Gundam kit I picked up a few weeks ago. This weekend was Dave (dhcloud on the forums) and Erin’s wedding and the Muse concert Sunday evening.
Things start off right after work on Friday. Angel and Nicky come over and we head out to the Kogi Truck near my house for dinner. After dinner we head over to Brea for some ice cream – the closest cold stone is there. Getting near downtown Brea, the parking structures are almost at capacity and some of the roads through Brea are closed due to the last weekend of the Jazz Festival going on through out the month of September. We parked and joined the masses. Cold stone was busy and we got in line. One of the three servers was busy doing little tricks with the ice cream. He was throwing it up in the air, catching it, throwing through his legs, etc etc. It was sorta entertaining. The line moved and we decided what we each wanted. With two people ahead of us, we’re almost there. Mr Ice Cream juggler is at it again, trying to impress his female customer. The cold ball of ice cream shoots out form under his leg and he screams, “OH GOD!” while jumping forward and slamming himself up against the raised counter, causing all the items on the counter such as cups, utensils, etc to go crashing down into the server’s side of the counter. *PLOP* the wad of ice cream lands on the corner of the raised counter. Mr Cream Tosser is now beet red with embarrassment. We clap and tip the poor bastard. Tosser boy cleans up his mess and then serves us our ice cream. Needing to build up his courage to start tossing again, he serves us our ice cream with minimal flair.
After walking around and finishing our ice cream, we headed over to the closest Best Buy as I wanted to pick up some movies; and they were closed, so we turned around and hit up the local Target. Killed a few birds with this stone as Nicky, Angel, and I needed to pick up birthday cards for our mothers whose birthdays are 2 days apart. And he and I got to pick up some new movies as well. Back at the house we get to working on our kit. We spent some time trying to figure out a good name for our model building group as we’re going to be sponsoring one of the trophies for the up coming IPMS Orange County OrangeCon competition – while trying to get some work done of our kits. I successfully get one hand clipped, sanded, and assembled before getting the call from the girlfriend letting me know she’s home. We chatted for a short while longer before NA leave and I head out to pick up Yuki.
Dave and Erin’s Wedding
Yuki and I get up around 10:30 and have a fairly relaxing morning. We ended up getting to NA’s place around 1:30 and head off towards Camarillo where Dave and Erin are getting married. Traffic and all that good jazz, we get arrive at about 3:45. Arriving to the guest sign in table, we spot Dave and go over and hang out with him. The girls run off to the “restrooms” which so happen to be port-a-potties. Yeah, time to switch over to camel mode and curtail my drinking for the night. Dave, Angel, and I snap a few pictures. The groomsmen take their first shot of the evening.
Not long after this, Terry and Christis show up. And a few minutes later, the ceremony starts. The wedding is officiated by Brandon Boyd’s mom. Yeah, I know, random. Well, she’s a reverend. Here are some shots from the ceremony.
During the ceremony, a bird decided to defecate, and Terry gets nailed. Christis’ entire being is shaking in an attempt to contain an outburst of laughter at poor Terry. Oh I only wished I sat behind them as I could have visually captured all the fun and goodness. Then again, it would have been too easy for me to agitate Christiana into a fit of laughter that would have only worked to put a complete standstill to the wedding ceremony. Dave and Erin exchange rings, kiss, and voila, they’re married.
After the ceremony, we head over to the reception area for drinks and some light snacks. Having had my fill of lemonade, I grab a beer. Nicky admonishes me as apparently, we agreed that her nor I will be consuming alcohol that evening – for the benefit of Dave and Erin I guess. Yeah, didn’t take long to break that rule. I wander around a little and snap a few more pictures.
Angel, Terry, and I are the three amigos.
And a few more pictures snapped before dinner and the after dinner activities.
The wedding party is introduced, and the bride and groom do their first dance, followed by the second dance with all of us joining.
Back at our table, Table 13; we meet the other folks at our table. Christiana immediately sends out a preemptive apology – for the potential mental anguish that may or may not occur as the night progresses.
The line for the buffet start up and the DJ starts with trivia questions to determine which tables go when. We missed the first question. The DJ gives his phone number out for the second question and requires that the answer be sent to him in text. Our new friend Rodo brings out his phone, and I give him the answer of “63” as what the sum of their Dave and Erin’s ages. The DJ calls the winning texter and Rodo’s phone rings, a loud cheer comes from our table. We have now successfully established that our table will indeed be the loudest table at the ceremony. I find it fairly ironic that at the last two weddings I’ve been to, I was lucky enough to be seated at what would be considered the “loud and fun table”.
The bride and groom make their way around and visit each table. I get the brilliant idea to grab the chairs from the head table and bring them over to our table so that when the bride and groom arrive, they can just sit and hang out with us drinking. Oh yeah, I’ve been spiking all the drinks I’ve gotten Nicky. Too bad, I ended up drinking most of them. The chairs are nice, and I sit in one and try to get someone from our table to join me. I even went as far as threatening Terry with the full price on the MG O kit I picked up for him last week. His attempts at getting up to join me were thwarted by Christiana smacking him when he tries. It’s always fun to see the mental tug of war that goes on in his brain when Christis and I tell him to do opposite things. I think it’s become a fun little game for me and Maim. Dave and Erin make their way to our table and Dave and I pound our drinks. And then a quick picture. Erin’s look on her face is absolutely priceless.
The evening continues and the sun goes down. We start dancing and enjoying the night. Sweating up a storm as we’re enjoying the music on the dance floor.
We snap some final pictures before calling it a night and driving back. Unfortunately, no one knows how to snap pictures with the camera on the settings I set it for without getting blurry shots, so the only clear shots I have are the ones I took… and still, they’re not the best shots in the world. I forgot to swap out my batteries for my camera, so I was using Yuki’s.
More pictures from the wedding are here: http://gamerabaenre.com/dave_erin_muse.htm
Muse
Sunday evening, we met up at Jenn’s place before caravaning out to the Staple’s Center for the Muse concert. Poor Angel, stuck in a car with 4 other women. I can see him twitch as the infamous backseat driver that is Helen points him in all sorts of directions, landing us at the 25 dollar lot, instead of the intended 10 dollar lot. We got out and headed for the pantry. It was Christiana’s birthday and given the several choices of food types, she mentioned “breakfast” and so we headed here. The stomachs of several people disagreed with this wisest of decisions. A good thing that Yuki and I had stuffed ourselves with Persian goodness, Koobediah, sangak, humus and all the fixins several hours prior so we were not overly hungry. We were fairly safe with the pancakes and french toast we ordered.
Afterward, we headed out to LA live and hung around until the group decided to split up and do different things. Angel, Nicky, Yuki, and I headed up to the Lucky Strike restaurant and meet up with Lockell and her “drunk after one cocktail” roommate Jessie. Gotta love Lock and her enabling ways. We hung out, and I watched the Dolphins’ score a touchdown right after the half before we got up and headed towards Staples for the concert.
Opening up for Muse was Passion Pit, a band from Boston. God they sucked. They did about an hour long set. ALL THEIR SONGS sounded the same. Ugh, they sucked. I mean, seriously, there was a reason this craptastic music DIED back in the 80’s.
After suffering through an hour of the dribble, the stage is cleared and Muse took the stage, kicking things off with Uprising off their latest album, The Resistance.
I snapped some videos from Yuki’s camera. So if you wanna listen, turn your volume and bass down, the sound quality sucks ass – it is a product of recording live events without professional equipment. But at least you guys get a little bit of a taste from the evening; so here ya go.
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Muse puts on a very entertaining live show. They have some amazing light effects.
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More songs from The Resistance album: Undisclosed Desires
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Unnatural Selection:
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Starlight, for which the band let the audience sing the chorus.
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Towards the end of the show, they did a fairly long “jam session” that seemed to go on a little longer than it should have. Granted it was kinda cool, but it was still a jam session.
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Their final song began with a harmonica solo and the harmonica was thrown into a the crowd and Knights of Cydonia was the last song. Unfortunately, something got corrupted and I don’t have the video file for that song. But alas, the sound quality wasn’t the greatest so you’re better off just listening to it elsewhere. Once the song was done, the lights came on and the stage was dismantled and we all headed home.
The concert was a blast, a definite must for any Muse fan. Now I need a week to recover. Coming up this Saturday is the October Build Gathering.